There is an immense reservoir of good will for public libraries and yet public libraries are struggling to stay afloat. Why is this? It seems that in our marketing efforts, we are being incredibly obtuse. But in what ways? How do we tap into Ghawar Field of public love for libraries? How do we make libraries sticky? Let's discuss.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

I'm a rookie Texas Hold 'em player but I love, love, love the game. One strategy that I have learned over the years: if you have the nuts (poker slang for an unbeatable hand), you should generally go all in. All the chips go into the center of the table. If people want to stay in the game, it's going to cost them. If they want to fold and walk away, leaving me with the smaller win, fine. I'll take it.

Either way, when you're sitting on the nuts that is not the time to hold anything back.

Poker to library/business reference transition...

In terms of the information world, the library has the nuts in terms of the best model out there to deliver high-quality content to our communities. It's time we started acting like it. It's time we started looking around at the best business libraries out there (http://businesslibrary.uflib.ufl.edu/businesslibraries and http://businesslibrary.uflib.ufl.edu/bestdatabases seem to be good places to start) and figuring out how our public libraries can get the same line-up of resources. If we're sitting on a royal flush, why not act like it?